Blue Carbonara

If it isn’t obvious enough, some of my ingredients repeat themselves over several recipes for the simple reason of trying not to waste. This whole cooking enterprise could be infinitely more expensive if I were to be buying blue cheese or special cuts of meat or buttermilk or whatever else for each recipe individually. Instead, and more realistically, I made Blue Burgers, then crumbled blue cheese on a few salads, then decided to see if blue cheese could work in a carbonara in an attempt to use that last little bit. I hope that is ever so slightly reassuring… so that when you look at a recipe and want to try something out, you have another two or three recipe options to use up those ingredients. Waste not and all that jazz…

Ok. Back to the recipe at hand. Spaghetti carbonara. As long as you don’t have egg issues, you likely have had and enjoy this dish. I always found it to be a wonderful dose of #foodporn, in its slippery-salty-sweet decadentness (not a word, I know… but I like it anyway). In Feast, Nigella Lawson only reinforced it to me as food porn when she described it as being “so right for that chin-dripping, love soaked primal feast, the first time someone actually stays through the night.” You’re speechless too, aren’t you?


Blue Carbonara
 
Ingredients:
1/2 pound / 1/2 packet spaghetti (enough for two decent appetites)
6 strips bacon
2 eggs
a splash of white wine or vermouth (maybe 1/4 cup)
1/4 cup cream
1/4 cup or 1/3 packet creamy blue cheese
a few sprinkles or grates of nutmeg
Salt (if any is needed) and pepper

Start your pasta. Get the water boiling while you heat your pan. Chop the bacon and toss it in the pan to cook. Toss in your spaghetti.

 
Once the bacon is good and crispy, pour off any excessive grease (of course into your grease tin and not down the drain). Check your pasta. If al dente, then drain and set it aside for the next step. Deglaze the pan (loosen all the yummy crispy bits) with the wine or vermouth. Let that reduce while you mix together your eggs, milk, cheese and a few cracks of pepper. Add your pasta to the bacon-wine pan and stir together.

Take the pan off of the heat and stir in your egg mixture. I love the squeeky slippery sounds that everything makes at this point. A few more cracks of pepper and sprinkles of nutmeg (I had whole nutmeg for once! A present from NY from Dave... so awesome!).

 
Dish up. And, if you’re a big blue cheese fan, you can always crumble a few more pieces overtop… then eat, in whatever love-soaked or love-lamented glory you can muster.